| This dissertation makes a historical and ethnographic examination of the transformation of contemporary Chinese medicine practice in China. I have divided my analysis into three parts: power, knowledge, and practice. In Part One: Power, I explore the postcolonial power relations that make it impossible to practice elite Chinese medicine in China today without also practicing Western medicine. I analyze two essential features of these power relations: the problem of Orientalism within Chinese medicine discourse and the relationship between medicine and the state. In Part Two: Knowledge, I argue that these postcolonial power relations have transformed or "Orientalized" Chinese medicine knowledge of the body and its illness processes. In the early 20th century, the growing importance of Western medicine challenged the validity of Chinese medicine, and the policies of the new Chinese nation state, the Republic of China, undermined its credibility. After many decades of struggle and with the support of the new Communist state, Chinese medicine doctors in the 1950s developed new standards (recorded in the form of textbooks) and established their key clinical methodology as "pattern recognition and treatment determination bianzheng lunzhi." The great achievement of bianzheng lunzhi, I will argue, is that it provided a reasonably reliable mechanism for the arduous task of translating between Chinese medicine and Western medicine. In Part Three: Practice, I consider the implications of bianzheng lunzhi methodology for actual clinical practice. On the one hand, the strength of bianzheng lunzhi---that it makes possible the integration of Chinese medicine and Western medicine---has also become its greatest weakness. Some doctors of Chinese medicine defer so completely to the authority of Western medicine that they make the Chinese medicine component of their clinical work supplementary, or even just perfunctory. On the other hand, other doctors have developed their own creative interpretations of bianzheng lunzhi that demonstrate the potential for great innovation and virtuosity. |
